In Yangsze Choo's debut novel, studious,
shy Li Lan, the last daughter of a fading businessman in colonial Malaysia pined quietly for Tian Bai, scion to the
Lim family's trading empire. That is, until she is offered to the
family's dead son, Lim Tian Ching, as
a
"ghost bride," a woman married to a dead man, a tradition thought to
appease vengeful spirits. After a terrifying visitation from her
suitor's
apparition, she drinks a medium’s potion, and her spirit escapes her
body, beginning a long, strange
journey through the netherworld for this now quite literal ghost bride.
What will she find in this dreamworld of ox-headed demons, living-shadow
puppets and guardian dragon spirits? Even stranger, what will she learn
in the world of the living about Tian Bai, Lim
Tian Ching's mysterious
death and her long-departed, beloved mother? The Ghost Bride begins
as
a historical novel but takes an unexpected turn into a fantastical,
ghost-and-murder mystery. What makes all this work is the sumptuous
world of Chinese émigré culture and the love story that flows under it
all—the kind so full of longing, the pages practically
sigh as you turn each one.